


Supertyp

by Imkerin



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 12:55:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7641040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imkerin/pseuds/Imkerin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>José left him a voicemail in the middle of the night, a week to the day after his first press conference, like clockwork.</p>
<p><i>So. You have a type,</i> it said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Supertyp

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hellabaloo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellabaloo/gifts).



José left him a voicemail in the middle of the night, a week to the day after his first press conference, like clockwork. The boxes he hadn't fully trusted to the movers were still unpacked in the attic; he was still fixing the last relevant details of the city map in his mind, he had passed this new German number out to almost nobody, but José? You could always set your watch by him.

_So. You have a type,_ it said. There followed a long pause, just long enough for Pep to glance heavenwards at the ceiling of his new bedroom and sigh with exasperation at the knowledge that a few hours before José had undoubtedly been picturing him doing exactly that, with that — yes, _that_ precise smug smirk. _How predictable,_ José's voice continued, finally, as Pep rubbed the crease out of the bridge of his nose, _This one is too old for your usual taste, but I suppose with enough wine..._ He trailed off, leaving Pep's mind to automatically, and regrettably, complete the obvious joke, if one could have said it would have qualified as such, about old _coq_ making tender meat. The line stayed open just long enough to give the unmistakable impression of savoring his irritation from across the limits of space and time before it went dead. Pep did not save the message at the prompt. 

A month later, in a perverse way, he nearly regretted that; José's sheer dedication to getting under people’s skins in the most irritating ways possible was in a way almost admirable. In retrospect, the voicemail had been a true masterpiece of the form, because nothing besides the shallowest possible detail of height connected Philipp with anyone else and yet he still could not seem to touch his new captain's shoulder to guide him to a point or suggest an adjustment or anything else without José pulling a goggle-eyed smirk in the back of his mind like a small comic devil or an overgrown mosquito.

Whether or not that had been a contributing factor, the supercup went poorly, even taking into account how little time he had had to rework Heynckes’ system and deal with a squad that was very definitely not his own. As he watched Klopp whoop his galloping way onto the field he was already halfway anticipating another little needle from José, laying the ground for next month; the only blessing of the post-loss conferences was that he was kept too busy to dwell.

When the phone rang that night, as expected, it was much earlier than José usually called, an almost-respectable time, and Pep picked up the phone to find that it wasn’t José at all: it was Philipp. For one wildly irrational moment he wondered if it could have been some sort of setup, but none of the expected knives were forthcoming, just a suggestion on how best to get information out of Götze, which led naturally into a surprisingly calm, insightful discussion of the loss and possible responsive adjustments; and, for the first time in ages Pep lost track of the hour until Philipp rang off, pleading his need for sleep. 

Left alone in the quiet of his office, contemplating his now-silent phone, he was forced to confront the extremely distasteful idea that José might actually have been right.

Philipp lingered in the dressing room at halftime, not obtrusively, just one or two seconds longer than normal: three games and a handful of tests and he already knew to the instant what was normal, God help him. But he dropped a step behind to walk next to him towards the door, and Philipp said promptly and under his breath, too quiet for either the team or the microphones to catch, “Mourinho is watching me.”

From some people that would have been a warning, from some a taunt, others a desperate request for help: from Philipp it sounded like tactical advice, and Pep felt himself smiling, just a little. “Good,” he said.

One thick eyebrow went up, but by then they had gone halfway through the tunnel and the cameras were thick on the ground, so Philipp said nothing, only nodded. His back was still game-hot when Pep laid his hand on it, pushing him gently back towards the field.

By the nature of things the rest of the conversation had to be put on hold for quite some time, but after the last month, Pep was already expecting it as Philipp peeled unnoticed away from his group at the hotel and crossed to wait at the elevator with him. The ride up was silent; it wasn’t until they stood in the empty hallway upstairs that Philipp glanced up at him and prompted, “Good?”

He could have been asking after any number of things, but he wasn’t; the careful timing of his exit from Schweinsteiger and Muller’s company, the quiet in the face of the elevator’s security camera: they talked where he didn't. “Good,” Pep repeated, smiling again. “While he was watching you, he wasn’t watching Javi.”

That startled a little laugh out of Philipp, surprisingly infectious. “People don’t usually use me as a decoy,” he said, though he sounded rather more pleased at the idea than anything else. “I’m not tall enough to hide much behind me.”

“I think that works to your advantage.”

He couldn’t have said exactly what changed, despite his closest watch: it was the minutest of shifts, but there was suddenly something a little calculating behind that disarmingly friendly smile. “Perhaps it does,” Philipp said. “But, I’ve been wondering: why me? Why not Basti, or Franck, or you? Someone who posed a more direct danger?”

Pep had suspected for a while, since before he officially accepted the job, that it was some odd combination of the Lahm and Schweinsteiger axis that was the key to keeping Bayern running smoothly, but, there in the hallway outside his hotel room, he was suddenly certain it was far more heavily Lahm than he had initially thought. What disturbed him most was not that he had been wrong, but that the idea didn't bother him in the slightest; that he found himself _anticipating_ working with Philipp to improve the club, after knowing him so little time. He turned to his door, half-hiding his face as he examined the problem and found no extraneous traps; only Philipp, who had gone to some length already to continually demonstrate his goodwill and intent to cooperate in both public and private.

But there was a certain amount of honesty needed to keep that sort of thing running; with the ease of a few Czech victory beers, he cast the dice; said, “José thinks I have a type.”

The calculation vanished instantly back behind the friendly mask, gone even as he glanced briefly up again, but he was listening intently enough as he went back to fiddling with his keycard to hear the surprise it was meant to hide in Philipp’s voice, instead. “A — type?”

Pep pushed the door open and left open behind him; Philipp followed him in, taking the unvoiced invitation without hesitation. “If by watching you, he could distract _me_....” He shrugged, tactfully not mentioning that he had, in fact, noticed José’s pointed observation before Philipp had had a chance to catch him at halftime.

By the time he tossed his card down on the table and shrugged out of his suit jacket, swinging it over the back of a chair, Philipp had put it together; it was obvious enough in the slight, assessing tilt of his head, in the new way he looked at Pep: still consummately professional, but no longer strictly so. He was expecting a question about Leo, mostly because the questions were always about Leo, but instead Philipp said: “Does he include himself in that?”

Pep found himself with nothing to say and a sharp desire to laugh, so he did. “I really don’t know,” he said. “He’s not the sort to elaborate when he knows saying less will dig more.” The awful thing was that if you set them all next to each other there was a sort of pattern there, even though they were all so terribly different, one that José hit nearly all the points of in the most frustrating ways.

Philipp nodded, accepting the non-answer as the acknowledgement that Pep has to admit it had been. “But you weren’t distracted."

“No.”

Philipp’s smile was bright and pleased again, but not the mask of before: honesty given, honesty returned. “Good."

"You don't mind." Pulling the chair out from the desk, Pep leaned against it, resting an elbow on the back to watch Philipp, his stance a few feet in from the door still casual, careless in a way that was very artfully, and almost flawlessly crafted.

"Mourinho?"

"Mourinho, his commentary, the results." He paused, weighing the risks against the necessities. "Me."

Philipp's smile didn't precisely dim so much as acquire an odd, problematically inscrutable quirk. "No," he said. "I don't mind. But tempting distractions during the season is rarely good for any team."

"No, it isn't." Whether that particular sally had been a proposition or a challenge — there was really no alternative but to agree then and reexamine it at length later, especially as just then he couldn't have said which he was hoping for more. Another thread in the pattern of his type, he thought with annoyed amusement. "To a successful season, then."

"Prost," Philipp said, pausing only slightly before turning to go. "And good night."


End file.
